


Photo Op

by TPride



Series: Torchwood Ficlets [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M, Post Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 05:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6840556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TPride/pseuds/TPride
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Memories and thoughts provoked by that photo on Gwen's computer</p>
            </blockquote>





	Photo Op

“What’s that doing here?” Jack nodded with his chin towards the photo of Owen and Tosh on Gwen’s computer station.

“Is that what you do, Jack? When you loose someone? You cut them out and just forget about them?” Gwen challenged him.

“Thinking about them isn’t going to bring them back.” Jack told her and moved off to his office. Gwen looked after him then turned away, to look down into Owen and Tosh’s smiling faces. Together in the same photo – the one that Tosh had kept on her fridge door. That Gwen had taken away with her when they had gone to empty out the flat of everything that Tosh had ever owned.

“I know he’s hurting too. But right now I could really use a drink!” Gwen said.

“Yeah. Me too.” Ianto replied, uncharacteristically.

Gwen nodded her head towards the exit, and they grabbed their coats and left. The rolling door was closing behind them when Jack called after them, “Gwen? Ianto?”

But for once they ignored him. The lift brought them up to the dock level, Ianto closed and locked the door to the ‘tourist office’ and they were off to a pub nearby. Ianto got them their pints and they sat in a private corner.

“What is it about the man? I mean, he runs off, leaving us holding the reins of something we’ve no idea how to handle. He comes back, things blow up in our face. Two of our team mates die, and here we are. Still with him?” Gwen was at her most Welsh, while Ianto just sat staring at the rim of his glass, not even looking at anything in particular. “I mean, can you tell me anything about why we even like him?” She finished.

Ianto lifted his glass. Then stopped: “Tosh and Owen.”

“Tosh and Owen!” She agreed, and they toasted then drank.

“I mean, you’re into him. – Ianto, right now, I could kick him in the nuts. But I also know that tomorrow morning, no matter how pissed off I am, I’ll be coming back. – He said it the first time I was even in the Hub: That I’d never tire of following him?”  
“It’s the pheromones.”  
“The what?”  
“He’s from the fifty first century. Humankind is changed then. He’s got a different scent to him.”  
“I can’t believe it’s just genetic.” Gwen dismissed the explanation. “When did you fall for him Ianto? I mean you brought Lisa here, you lied to all of us to try and save her.”

Ianto looked down again. Quiet once more. His beer half drunk now.

“I’m not pushing you to talk about it, if you don’t want to. I’m just trying to understand how I can be so bloody fascinated by the bastard!”

“He can’t die.” Ianto told her.

Gwen looked at him. Then away.

“When I first met him, he was fighting a Weevil. I knew who he was, had been stalking him for quite a bit. That was the first time I got in close, interacted with him. Started to court him. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. Flirting – He does it so naturally, doesn’t he? It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Ianto took another hefty sip of his beer. Gwen kept quiet.

Any questions now and Ianto might clam up and never utter another word on the subject. The young Welshman was incredibly loyal. A quality that she knew both she and Jack admired. Just as both knew that when Ianto loved, he loved implicitly. The object of his love was to be loved no matter what. But here he was, right now, speaking about himself, and so indirectly about Jack. Gwen kept her tankard in her hand, and didn’t move so much as a muscle. Ianto wasn’t easy to spook, except when things got personal.

“I kept at it. He let me in. I looked around, and got Lisa installed. And I smiled, and flirted, and just kept it at that. Thinking it would keep him off the trail. It worked.” Ianto took another sip. “It worked.” He repeated far more quietly. “The flirting. After Lisa was dead, after I came back. Because I knew nothing else, had nowhere else. And I found that I didn’t want to loose my memories of Lisa, so – I had no choice but to come back.” He admitted. “He was kind.”

Ianto was looking into the distance again. Gwen took an experimental sip and realised that he wasn’t seeing her. So she settled herself a bit more comfortably on her chair.

“The flirting had become a habit. And I found I didn’t want to break it.” Ianto admitted. “It was one of the few things about working at Torchwood that made my days bearable. That, and holding on to my grief like a torch of repentance.”

He looked down again. Then lifted his pint. “Lisa.” He said toasting his dead girlfriend. The girl that Gwen had never met. Not the cyber-being that had invaded their hub, killed two people, and done her best to kill the rest of them as well. Gwen drank to that girl, to the joy she had brought this young Welshman when he first moved to London, away from home, and had met her.

Ianto had emptied his pint now and set it down.

“We love him because he’s immortal. Because he can’t die. Because he’s safe to love.” He told Gwen and finally looked her in the eyes.

Then he stood heading for the men’s room, and Gwen sat back, her own thoughts far away, back to those first moments of meeting Jack, the bar he had taken her to, the drink he had spiked, the mental fencing she had done with him there, while he calmly doped her with Retcon. And the way she had turned to him on her wedding day, and confessed that she loved him – just not like she loved Rhys.

She emptied her own pint glass and set it down. Then stood as Ianto came back to their table. Rhys, and Ianto, were real. Jack, by his very nature wasn’t.

Yes, Ianto was right. Jack was safe to love.

And to hate. He was eternal, and always. And if you were very lucky he’d remember you for years to come for the good things. For the bad things he would surely set aside, like he had Ianto’s betrayal of them all.

Or her own, when she shot him to bring Rhys back to life. Her Rhys. Her real life. Her balance to the job she loved nearly as much as she did Rhys.

They shucked back into their jackets and headed out, getting fish and chips at the stand. Avoiding the boob-top chicks in miniskirts who were fighting the sea-gulls for their chips in the light evening drizzle.

They were heading back. To the Hub. To the love they both chose above all else.


End file.
